The general model of delivering of television programming content to viewers is based on a temporal schedule and channels for distributing television programming. Generally, to view a particular television programming content, a viewer finder the channel where the particular television programming content is offered and the time at which the television programming content is available for viewing. Viewers receive television programming broadcast through different tiers of services offered by cable television providers and satellite television providers. For example, without subscribing to a cable or satellite provider, a viewer is limited to receiving only local network broadcasts available in a particular region. The viewer is offered different levels of programming services when subscribing to a cable or satellite provider. The more the viewer pays, the more the number of channels of programming content is available to the user. In addition, the subscriber to the cable or satellite services is often offered a pay per view or on-demand service where movies or special features such as certain live events can be transmitted to the user for viewing at a one-time fee. However, the delivery of content to a subscriber of these cable and satellite service providers is done by one mode of transmission by each provider, such as cable or satellite or wireless broadcast, rather than a hybrid mode of transmission.
Other non-television based programming providers, such as movies or video-on-demand providers, use the Internet as a mode of delivering content. Such providers do not deliver any live television programming content. They only deliver videos and movies for play back at a viewer's home. In other words, such providers do not deliver live television programming or any sort of linear programming. They deliver only non-linear programming. Non-linear programming includes programs that cannot be viewed in real-time, and may be viewable only once after the programming content is downloaded. Such providers are limited to transmitting their programming content, such as movies, via the Internet.
In addition to television programming content and on-demand movie content, viewers are also increasingly interested in viewing audio and visual data such as video clips posted by others for sharing on the Internet. There is currently not one service provider available in the market to allow a viewer to view live television, on-demand movie content, and internet video clips. Many of the current modes of content delivery such as cable provider, satellite provider, and Internet movie-on-demand provider are expensive. Often, the offerings available to viewers are limited by the mode of delivery for which they are set up to receive. Most importantly, with the increasingly dynamic schedules in television viewers' lives, even with the availability of recording devices like digital video recorders (DVRs), video cassette recorders (VCRs), the current modes of television viewing still do not adequately adapt to the viewing behavior of viewers. Further, what viewers pay do not correlate to the amount of programming content they actually view.